Group Shifts Course In Tax Fairness Fight

December 04, 1998|By Dennis Sullivan.

STEGER — In an about-face, leaders of a tax grass-roots group say they will work to outlaw apportionment, a revenue redistribution procedure widely used to equalize property taxes in districts that straddle Cook and the collar counties.

"The state constitution says taxes must be fair and equal," John Cashman, co-chairman of the Steger WillCo Action Tax Force, said during the group's monthly meeting Wednesday. "We know they're not equal. The question is, are they fair? No, they're not."

According to the Illinois Department of Revenue, 110 taxing districts overlap Cook County and a collar county. Taxing differences between Cook and the surrounding counties often have translated into higher taxes for the non-Cook County property-tax payers.

To equalize the tax burden, the City of Chicago, the Village of Park Forest, Thorn Creek Basin Sanitary District, the Prairie State College District and 42 other overlapping taxing districts are using apportionment.

Cashman and fellow co-chairman Lawrence "Buster" Kreidler had hoped apportionment could similarly be used in the five taxing districts that straddle Steger's Cook and Will County sides.

But the Steger-South Chicago Heights Library District already has opted out of apportionment. Cashman and Kreidler said the other four districts are likely to follow suit.

Cashman acknowledged that working to "throw the apportionment law out" is likely to anger taxpayers in the 46 participating districts. But he said mobilizing widespread collar-county taxpayer resistance to the Cook County system may be necessary to address the core problem: Cook's taxing system.